Shaking hands with global warming
Chris Solic
Another week passes, another article concerning global warming goes to print. It’s the debate of the decade, it seems, and for good reason: global warming is a reality. Unfortunately, behind this important issue lurks a predictable antagonist — the misinformed, manipulative writer.
It is either sloppy fact checking or simply deceit on a writer’s part to surround the substantiated fact of global warming with misleading falsehoods. In Tracey Lindeman-Jarvis’s article, “Euthanizing planet Earth,” published last week in the Manitoban, she stated in reference to CO2 in the atmosphere that “it took around four billion years for it to reach 280 parts per million.”
Although current levels have risen to around 300 – 400 ppm, many scientists, using the geologic record as evidence, postulate that CO2 levels in the earth’s primordial atmosphere were as much as 100 to 1000 times greater than today’s, and that in the Cretaceous greenhouse world, 100 million years ago, a time of tremendous biodiversity, CO2 levels may have been 10 times higher.
About the rise in CO2 levels from pre-Industrial Revolution times of 280 ppm to current levels of around 380 ppm, Lindeman-Jarvis refers to The Weather Makers when stating that this “is the fastest rate of increase in the world’s history.” However, such resolution of relatively short-term climate change is impossible to accurately define from the over four billion years of the earth’s history.
Elsewhere, Lindeman-Jarvis’s article smacks of pure scare-tactics. She implies that a greenhouse-caused flood could very well eliminate the world’s population. Does she mean, therefore, that everyone on the face of the planet lives along coastlines? Or is she implying that a 5000 metre-tall wave will develop, wiping out even the Tibetans? Come on, we’re not that gullible.
What I find the most disturbing, however, is the assumption by Lindeman-Jarvis that scientists are united in stance and opinion regarding the greenhouse effect, human influence on it, and the kind of future environment it will dictate. Scientists, she explains, are trying to tell us that “the planet is dying,” while “global warming skeptics” are the ones discounting those claims.
Guess what, many of those skeptics are scientists, too. What many of them say is that, yes, global warming is happening and we humans likely have a role in it. But they also state that the phenomenon has occurred countless times throughout the earth’s history. And most importantly, the scientific community’s understanding of the mechanisms that control greenhouse conditions is so poorly constrained that no one can claim to know exactly what is happening to our environment or what will happen to it in the future. The earth could just as easily revert to a cooling, icehouse trend for no understandable reason.
It could be argued that at the core of many people’s argument claiming humankind as the sole driver of global warming lies a distaste for two things: human nature, and change. Regarding the former, the theme is often repeated by Lindeman-Jarvis, with statements such as “humans are largely to blame” and “humans are largely responsible for the planet’s suffering.”
For the latter, every ecologic change attributed to warming, like salmon in the Arctic, turbulent weather and the loss of sea-ice for the emotion-rousing polar bear, is flagged as a sign of our ignorance and apathy. Although these accusations against our character are in part true, they remain a pathetic distillation of what it is to be alive, in any animal form. Sure, it would be great if we were perfect. But we’re not, nor will we ever be.
It is okay to sleep soundly over our supposedly modest but genuine contributions to reducing global warming, like recycling, being frugal consumers, and so on, because if, as some say, we are (solely) to blame for global warming, then the only way to stop it is to stop all human-derived greenhouse gas emission. And I don’t see anyone walking away from modern society to do that. We can always do more, of course, but humanity will continue to define its own limit of lifestyle change (needed to curb pollution), regardless of speculative attacks by those whose words often speak louder than their actions.
If this means that, at some point down the road, by our doing or not, the earth becomes an inhospitable place for us and many other life forms to exist, well, that’s okay with me, too. I mean, who is selfish enough to absurdly proclaim that the earth’s environment should for all eternity remain in its current state? It has changed so many times before — so many extinctions, so many greenhouse and icehouse worlds, eradicating so much life. And all without a single SUV around on which to lay blame. Why should we expect the future to be any different?
Chris Solic is a fourth-year geology student.
